Bud leaped on him and clapped a hand over the man’s mouth. Before the guard could recover from the surprise attack, Tom had flung open the door and was back to help Bud. He tied one handkerchief firmly over the guard’s mouth and with another bound the man’s wrists together behind his back. The boys placed him on the cabin’s cot and bolted the door.
“Now let’s get out of here!” Tom urged.
Both he and Bud knew it would take only a little while for the guard to tear the handkerchiefs off. But the boys hoped that by then they would be safely away.
Running at top speed through the woods, the
AN INVENTIVE ESCAPE 83
two did not pause until they came to a small rise about a hundred yards from the cargo plane.
“We can watch for our chance from here!” Tom whispered, and crawled forward to the edge of the underbrush.
There was a bustle of great activity at the docked sky freighter. The four-man crew, jabbering in a foreign language which the boys did not understand, carried box after box down the ramp to small trucks. Finally, the pilot waved to the truck drivers.
“They’ve finished discharging the cargo,” Tom murmured. “Now if all of them will only leave!”
To the boys’ relief, the pilot and his crew hopped onto one of the trucks and rode across the clearing toward what appeared to be a mess hall.
“This is it!” Tom cried. “Dig for the plane!”
“Okay, skipper.”
They raced across the rough ground onto the dock. Only a short distance remained to be covered when Bud spotted a guard atop the hangar.
“Step on it!” he cried.